First published on TECHNET on Feb 11, 2011
I’ve had this question come up a few times now, so to avoid repeating myself I’ll just blog about it! :)
Scenario: Affected user receives an email from the service desk requesting additional information. The affected user replies to the email providing the additional information. The Exchange connector picks up the email and updates the action log with the additional information.
Question: How does the assigned to user get notified that the affected user has provided the required information?
Here’s how…
-
Decide on some property or value that indicates the user has updated the incident. For now let’s assume that we are going to add a new status called ‘Updated by Affected User’ as a sub status under Active. Do this by editing the incident status list in the Lists view. You could do other things like create your own custom property called ‘Updated by User’ or whatever.
-
Create an incident template that sets that property from #1. In this example the template would set the incident status to ‘Updated by Affected User’. Hint: you can change the status in template mode using the ‘Change Incident Status’ task in the Tasks pane.
-
In the Exchange connector properties dialog there is a place where you can choose which template to apply when an incident is being updated. Select the template you created in #2. Now - whenever the incident is updated by the Exchange connector this template will also be applied which will change the status to ‘Updated by Affected User’.
-
Create a notification template for this scenario if you haven’t already done so.
-
Create an incident event workflow with the criteria: when incident status changes FROM
not
equal to ‘Updated by Affected User’ TO equal to ‘Updated by Affected User’. Choose the notification template you created in #4 and the assigned to user.
